For years, a company's success depended on its ability to receive, manufacture, and ship physical goods. However, as the industrial economy gave way to the information economy, the game changed. Over the past several decades, the use of electronic communications by individuals and companies has exploded. There is a great need for companies to share electronic information, within a company, between companies and with the public. Furthermore, product ordering, and even delivery for digital products, is now regularly performed electronically. However, the increase in electronic communications and commerce has also created numerous problems of reliability, security, and coordination. These problems are not adequately address by existing mechanisms for transferring electronic information.
In the 21st century, business success no longer hinges on the movement of physical goods, but on the exchange of data: a company's ability to produce, add value to, and derive value from data is crucial to its success. Regardless of whether data is satellite imagery, software source, seismic exploration results, reinsurance documentation or any other form of electronic information, data is critical to modern businesses. Furthermore, enterprises need to collaborate with suppliers, partners and customers, while doing so with fewer fixed costs and less capital. To be successful, enterprises must efficiently move data without stumbling on system, geographic or corporate boundaries. The expansion of information transfers and cost reduction pressures have impeded the ability of companies to properly handle electronic information.
Often the process of exchanging data relies on homegrown tools for information transfer. Many companies expend substantial effort scripting data transfers that use the File Transfer Protocol (FTP), rather than applying resources to revenue generating activities. Automating just one simple process can take many person-months of effort.
Many organizations attempt to secure electronic transfer over public Internet Protocol-based networks using Virtual Private Networks (VPNs). However, VPNs offer nothing in terms of process automation and application integration and require compatible VPN implementations at either end of the connection. It is unrealistic to expect all suppliers, vendors, customers, trading partners, or collaborators to implement company specific VPNs in order to communicate.
Extensive mergers and acquisitions have also changed the state of today's enterprise and the need for information sharing. This trend is prevalent in the high-tech sector, where established players are acquiring or merging with smaller companies in niche markets. This growth increases the necessity to have a reliable means of sharing data between two companies that need to operate as one. Companies are often relying on physical media and homegrown systems to transfer business critical data from one work site to another. With a merger or acquisition, companies are faced with the troubling task of needing to distribute physical media to more people or linking new users who are operating on disparate systems into their homegrown data transfer solution.
As the challenge of transferring data with their customers, partners and suppliers swells for organizations, there is a growing need for different solutions for different “classes” of business data. Much like the postal service deals with letters and packages of varying shapes and sizes, so does data transfer. For example, data that must be distributed to many people around the world is best delivered using a browser-based Internet download solution. On the other hand, critical corporate data that requires process automation and high levels of security is best distributed using an automated data distribution model.
Existing systems and processes for communicating or transferring electronic data have great deficiencies in meeting many needs of today's businesses. In particular, existing solutions lack the ability to address automated, event-driven, system-to-system data distribution requirements. They also lack the ability to provide proper security with ease of use and wide distribution. Furthermore, they are not easily scalable or interoperable. Therefore, a need exists for a system that automates secure system-to-system data distribution amongst a large number of sources and targets over any network.